


Raising the Living

by nerdzeword



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Beetlejuice AU, Found Family, I know I said major character death, M/M, This is fluffy i promise, and i'm not wrong, but like, post mortem adoptions still count, they start out that way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25702435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdzeword/pseuds/nerdzeword
Summary: Neil and Andrew aren't going to let a little thing like death ruin their future plans
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 5
Kudos: 45
Collections: AFTG Bingo Blackout 2020 - Cupcakes, All For The Game Bingo 2020





	Raising the Living

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of my fics for the Cupcake Bingo Blackout! Specifically, the ghost AU. 
> 
> As always, thanks to the cupcakes for letting me bounce ideas around the gc, and to @makebelieveanything especially for the beta.  
> If you haven't yet, be sure to check out all of their bingo fics too!
> 
> y'all can thank my friend James for the title

It wasn’t so bad really, being dead. In some ways it was better than being alive. Neil no longer had to go to any of the annoying photoshoots that had plagued his days. He no longer had to listen to his coach yell at him for starting fights, when it was  _ obviously _ Davidson who started them. And he got to wake up with his husband every morning, instead of being constantly torn between cities and opposing teams. 

He mostly just thought it was dumb that he had spent so much of his life running from things that were  _ actively  _ trying to kill him, just for it to end up being a stupid car crash that finally took him out. Even more dumb was the fact that he wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment, according to the dead person’s handbook - or whatever the fuck - which Andrew had found on the second day. That wasn’t strictly true. They discovered the handbook the second day. They discovered they couldn’t leave on the first day when Neil had tried to go for his usual morning run and ended up walking into a jungle and being stalked by a tiger for a few hours. Not even a cute tiger either. 

They hadn’t tried to leave the house since, and Neil wondered what they would do when they finally ran out of cat food.

It turned out to not be a problem, as they only had three weeks of peace before reality set in and they woke up to find that some kids had found out that their apartment was currently unoccupied and decided to make themselves at home. Which honestly, they should have expected, if not from squatters than from the landlord selling the place himself. They owned Neil’s condo, which was closer to Palmetto and held all of the important things like their pictures and documents. Aaron or Nicky was in charge of sorting that one out, per the instructions outlined in their wills. Neil did not envy them. He had been in a rush to see Andrew and hadn’t bothered to clean before he left, so it was probably a mess.

Andrew’s apartment was always meant to be a temporary thing. A stepping stone until they had both managed to transfer to the same team. The only thing of importance in Andrew’s apartment was his carefully cultivated book collection, and the cats, who travelled with them wherever they went. 

“I knew this would happen,” Andrew responded simply when Neil brought up the invaders.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Neil asked as he shoved all of the dumb magazines one of their apparent new roommates had brought with him, off of the counter (where they did not belong) and onto the floor (where they also did not belong, but maybe he would take the hint and actually put them on the bookshelves which - actually, no. Andrew would probably figure out how to commit murder from the afterlife if new guy messed up his ridiculously organized book collection - maybe his room?)

“I figured you would figure it out.” Andrew, for his part, was digging through the freezer in search of the ice cream they had watched one of the girl roommates stash in there the day before. Sir wove his way between Andrew’s ankles and meowed pitifully. Neil wondered how she managed to weave her way between his legs without managing to go through him even once.

“Not for cats,” Andrew told her seriously, but he pulled the bag of treats off the top of the fridge anyway.

“Andrew, you’re going to make her fat, and we can’t even take them to the vet anymore.”

Andrew ignored him and fed King a treat too when she appeared at his feet with a soft meow of her own.

Neil sat on the counter (where he did not belong) to watch his husband spoil their children (which he should not have been doing).

“So opinions on the new roommates?” Neil asked him, swinging his legs back and forth into the counter. They didn’t make satisfying thumping sounds anymore. Neil kicked his feet harder in annoyance.

“The loud one and the bitchy one have to go. The emo one can stay.”

“...Which one is the emo one?”

“The one with the black hair.” 

“Oh. her. Yeah she seems cool. I think she plays Exy. She seemed excited to find your spare stick in the closet.” Andrew pointedly rolled his eyes at Neil, but joined him on the counter with his newly acquired tub of ice cream. 

“Can you even eat that?”

“I can certainly try.” He could in fact eat it. 

“Right. Anyway. How do we get rid of them? And why couldn’t we have been stuck at the condo. This place is so boring.” Neil kicked his feel petulantly again, but they still weren’t thumping against the cabinets correctly.

“All we have to do is scare them, probably. Just show them your face. That should do it.” Andrew took another pointed bite of his stolen ice cream. 

Neil rolled his eyes in return. “Ha, bloody ha. I’m serious Andrew.”

“So am I. Except Robin. The cats like her. And she has good taste in music. Even if she is a jock like you.”

“One. You married me, so. Two. You are also a jock. Three. Which one is Robin?”

Andrew just stared at him for a long moment. 

“Oh.” Neil was suddenly struck with the realization that he knew where this was going. He had seen it before. Many times before actually. “Oh no. No. Nope. Andrew, we’re dead! We can’t adopt any more strays! Not to mention, she’s like, what? Eighteen? She’s an adult! Too old to be adopted!”

“She’s seventeen. She ran away from her foster family. She tells people she’s in college, but she’s not actually because she would need a guardian to sign the paperwork until she turns eighteen in a few months. She works part time at a shitty cafe and met the bitchy one on craigslist.” Sometimes Andrew scared Neil, just a little.

“And how do you know this?”

“She told me obviously.”

“When?” Neil was more confused than ever.

“Like, three months ago. I’ve been telling you about her for weeks.”

“Oh! Barista Girl!” Neil did know about Barista Girl. In fact, he had been hearing about nothing  _ but  _ Barista Girl for weeks. It had been a bit surprising really, a friendship born of mutual respect after Andrew threatened a customer that was harassing her, and Robin had repaid him by giving him his sugar monstrosity for free every day for a week afterward. Neil still wasn’t sure how she remembered his coffee order, since Neil had been trying for actual years and still hadn’t come close. Either way, mutual respect had led to a genuine - if a bit weird - friendship, where they bonded over books, emo music and the best place to buy black nail polish. 

If Andrew had any other friends at all, Neil might have mocked him for being best friends with a literal child. But as it was, Neil had mostly just been happy that Andrew had someone to keep him company when he wasn’t around. 

“I was going to invite her to stay in the spare room before we died,” Andrew informed him. Neil had been expecting that particular announcement since before they had died too actually. 

“Right. Okay. So how exactly are we going to get rid of two of them, but adopt the last one, when we’re, you know, dead?” 

“Maybe we don’t have to. We have another house, what if we just move her there?”

“Sure, do you know how to do that? Because I don’t,” Neil replied grumpily. Andrew was supposed to be the voice of reason in this relationship. Neil was not equipped to deal with any of this.

Andrew ignored his obvious pouting, and started flipping through the handbook. “You said she’s a jock right? Maybe we can get her an Exy scholarship? We have enough funds stashed around the house that we could probably even pay for her to go to school anyway.”

“Okay, but  _ how?” _

“Well, the first thing is probably making contact with Robin,” he said contemplatively. It occurred to Neil that Andrew might in fact be enjoying this whole being dead thing. Not that he would ever admit it even if he were.

“Can we do that?”

“Well, we can touch things if we try, and the cats can see us, so it’s probably not impossible.” Neil thought that even if it was impossible, Andrew would still probably figure out a way to do it. Andrew continued to thumb through the death manual. Neil knew he was serious - despite his nonchalance - because he had set aside his stolen ice cream and left it on the kitchen counter to melt. “Here. It says we can go to the Netherworld or whatever the fuck, and talk to our caseworker.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Yeah it is. Alright. Neil. we have chalk somewhere right?” Neil passed him a pencil obediently. Of course they didn’t have fucking chalk. No one used chalk anymore.

Andrew sighed at the pencil but used it to draw a rough rectangle on the wall. It was a good thing they were dead, because they would not be getting their deposit back if the landlord ever saw what Andrew had done to his previously spotless white walls.

Andrew drew a janky circle approximately where the doorknob should have been and pulled the new door open before Neil could quite figure out how the mechanics of that were supposed to work. He wondered if he should try changing out of the blood-splattered Palmetto sweatshirt and off-brand Adidas sweat pants that he had died in, but one glance around what seemed to be a waiting room, and he came to the conclusion that maybe his own casual outfit wasn’t so bad. After all, the guy in the corner was holding his own head. 

They took a number, and Neil is reminded vaguely of the DMV. He wasn’t even sure how long it had been since they had arrived but time seemed to both go slower and accelerate in that space. “Mr. Minyard. Mr. Josten.” The reception lady with the knife in her head called out, “Mrs. Dewbright will see you now.”

“Ready?” Andrew asked, holding out a hand. Neil sighed in mock defeat. 

“I suppose. Let’s go adopt a child from beyond the grave I guess.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to chat, I'm on tumblr at nerdzewordart


End file.
